Forbes: Cutting Spam Down To Size

“As much as 45% of all e-mail sent this year will be spam and,
by 2007, some forecasts suggest that spam may account for 70% of
all e-mail. Given statistical trends like that, simply using e-mail
is essentially an unintentional invitation to get spam, like having
a telephone is an unintended invitation to get calls from
telemarketers. And given that comparison, living a life that
includes using e-mail yet is spam-free seems unlikely–unless you
are very lucky.

“But when it comes to spam, we’ve tended to have a serious lack
of luck. Monday mornings–spammers always seem more active during
the weekends–have for the last several months become the time for
a ritualistic purging of the spam from our in-boxes. And so when
the information-technology staff let us know that they were testing
a new anti-spam tool, and that a few test subjects were needed,
there was no shortage of volunteers.

“The tool is SpamAssassin, and it’s lately been making the
rounds among companies and organizations looking to gain control of
their spam intake without spending a huge pile of money–which,
given the constrained nature of IT budgets these days, should make
the program pretty popular…”

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